Abstract
Two experiments were conducted to evaluate digestibility, performance and carcass traits of finishing pigs fed fibrous diets, such as, basal diet (Control treatment) and inclusion of Tifton-85 hay, Soybean hulls or Citrus pulp. Twenty crossbred castrated male pigs, with average body weight of 70.00±1.95 kg, distributed in a randomized block design with four treatments and five repetitions (blocks) were used to evaluate apparent total tract digestibility of dietary nutrients. To evaluate animal performance and carcass traits, eighty commercial hybrids pigs with 120 days of age and average body weight of 73.00±3.3 kg were used. Pigs were distributed in 40 boxes according to gender and body weight, with one castrated male and one female pig per pen (experimental unit), in a randomized block design with 10 repetitions (blocks) per treatment were used. Regarding the digestibility assay, Tifton hay presented 2425 kcal of digestible energy/kg, with low digestible protein content (3.36%). Citrus pulp presented 2850 kcal of digestible energy/kg, also with low digestible protein content (1.47%). Soybean hulls showed 2250 kcal of digestible energy/kg, with relatively medium crude protein digestibility coefficient (7.85%). Offering different fiber sources in the finishing phase for pigs promoted significant differences (p0.05) was observed for carcass parameters. Given the results obtained in this study, Soybean hull showed to be a promising ingredient to be used in diets of finishing pigs, leading to good results on animal performance and also contributing to the sustainability of pig production.
Highlights
World pig production, like other agribusiness, has grown significantly in recent years
Dry matter (DM), Crude Protein (CP) and Gross Energy (GE) analyses of diets were performed according to Silva and Queiroz (2002)
Despite the fact that the digestibility of ingredients and not that of the diets was evaluated in the present study, for comparison purposes, Lun et al (1988) found similar digestibility values for DM, CP, digestible energy and metabolizable energy in diets of growing pigs with 50% replacement of corn by triticale; increased dietary fiber resulted in a decrease in CP apparent digestibility, absorbed and fecal nitrogen, which likely was due to the higher microbial protein synthesis in the large intestine and increased bacterial nitrogen excretion (Sauer et al, 1991), decreasing protein digestibility
Summary
Like other agribusiness, has grown significantly in recent years. Given this growth, an extremely important factor is the degree of nutritional competition that pigs present in relation to the human species. It is clearly necessary to reformulate nutrition and feeding system for pigs. This can be done through studies to investigate the ability of these animals to use alternative sources of energy and/or protein, which are preferably not used in human diet and are generally available at a lower cost to the producers, which is the case of several fibrous feeds. Studies on the potential of various fibrous sources on swine production regarding the identification, quantification and evaluation of interactions between the physiological and associative effects on digestibility and animal performance are needed, given the limited ability of the digestive tract of these animals to process this fibrous feedstuff
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